The present disclosure relates to hospital bed mattresses and particularly, to control systems for hospital bed mattresses in which portions of the control systems may control inflation of one or more air bladders included in the mattresses and portions of the control systems may control bed exit alarms. The present disclosure also relates to hose assemblies that interconnect control units with associated mattresses.
Hospitals use a variety of different mattress types to support patients having different medical needs. Some patients benefit from being supported on alternating pressure mattresses or rotation therapy mattress. Other patients may not need to be supported on these types of mattresses having dynamic therapies, but rather, so-called static air mattresses that simply operate to provide a relatively low interface pressure may be suitable for such patients. To address these various mattress requirements, manufacturers may market a number of mattress products, each with its own particularized therapeutic function, or may market mattresses that have control units allowing users to program or select different modes of operation. It can be expensive for hospitals or other healthcare institutions to purchase a large number of mattresses, each having its own dedicated therapeutic functionality. However, mattresses allowing user selectable functionality introduce the possibility that users may inadvertently configure the mattress with the wrong type of therapy or operation among the plurality of the available therapies.
It is sometimes desirable for patients to remain in bed and, in such situations, hospitals are interested in having some type of bed exit alarm for these patients to provide an alarm or alarm signal indicating that the patient has exited, or is about to exit, the bed. Some bed frames have built-in bed exit alarm systems, oftentimes using the load cells of a weigh scale system, to determine the presence or absence of a patient on the bed and triggering a bed exit alarm when a threshold amount of weight is determined to have been removed from the bed. The addition of a weigh scale system to a bed frame adds cost and therefore, hospitals purchase many bed frames without the weigh scale system option and consequently, therefore, without any bed exit alarm capability. Separate bed exit systems having strips or mats that are placed on top of a mattress and underneath a patient are known in the art, but such strips or mats may result in increased interface pressure on the patient and thus, may compromise the ability of the mattress to support the patient with relatively low interface pressure.